KITE (a memoir short)

When I’m flat on my back, I hope to feel like I did

It’s hard to accept just how much I’ve forgotten. How much I CHOSE to forget. How much I had to forget if I wanted to survive.

But memories, like emotions, don’t exist independently. They’re as interwoven as the different parts of our bodies are to our consciousness and sense of self.

Brene Brown, famed expert and social science researcher on shame and vulnerability, noted that if you numb one emotion, you numb all of them. There’s simply no way to kill our connection to sadness without also destroying our connection to joy.

When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive ones. — Brene Brown

In the same way…the memories I needed to forget took with them those that could have been left behind. I worried for decades that I’d never get them back.

But here they are. One at a time.

I love my purple hair almost as much as I love my cat

ALL YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO LEAVE BEHIND